Ginny Baker's Rules for Trailblazers
by Ember Nickel
Summary: Practical life advice for the first werewolf restaurateur in San Diego. (Chocolate Box 2017 gift for reeby10.)


I know Blip refers to San Diego as "the only home [the twins] have ever known," but given that doesn't make sense with the rest of the minor league timeline, i've elected to cheerfully ignore that. :p

* * *

 **Know who you can trust.**

After her first few conversations with Evelyn Sanders, Ginny Baker thought they'd hit it off pretty well. True, most of those were dinners that Blip had set up after games, celebrating another hard-fought Missions win, drowning their sorrows after a loss, or desperately trying to make conversation about anything other than their rapidly-dispersing teammates' futures. She was happy for another friendly face to share occasional evenings with, and got the impression that Evelyn was particularly grateful for Blip's talking shop to feature slightly less testosterone than usual.

So she wasn't surprised that they would keep making plans, nor that eventually those plans would fall through. Nor that it was Blip who had to cancel. He had two little kids to take care of, Ginny told herself while trying to avoid wincing at how empty her social life felt in San Antonio. Nor, ultimately, was she surprised that Blip felt comfortable enough around her to speak candidly about the circumstances.

But she did expect him to be a _little_ more...classy.

"Blip," she said into the phone, "you don't just announce when it's someone's time of the month."

"What?" Blip said. "Oh, not _that_ , I meant, the other thing."

"The other thing?"

"Uh, probably not my place to say."

"What?"

"Evie? It's Ginny. D'you mind...you don't...can I? Sorry, she's a little under the weather today."

"Yes, I'd gathered."

"No, I mean—look, can you keep a secret?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's nothing bad, just personal."

"I guess?"

"Well, pick up your own extension then!" Blip's muffled voice came through.

A few moments later, an exhausted Evelyn said, "Hello?"

"What?" Ginny snapped.

"This isn't exactly convenient for me either, I'm fighting some lycanthrophy at the moment. Maybe I'll see you next week."

"Lycawhat? I'm so sorry."

"It's just a werewolf thing," Blip explained, "it's not, like, cancer."

"Uh-huh," Ginny said, taking a minute. "...werewolves? Is this Blip's idea of a joke?"

"I wish," said Evelyn. "No, some of his home remedies are pretty hilarious, but that's real."

" _Werewolves_ , though? Can I, like, order you pizza?"

"I don't think they deliver the kind of stuff I have cravings for," Evelyn explained.

"Um," said Ginny. "Do you want me to watch the twins, maybe? Would that help?"

"We're fine," said Evelyn. "Blip's pretty good about taking care of them when I'm not feeling well."

"Well, sure. But I don't mind helping out."

"You might as well let her," said Blip. "We can return the favor someday."

"I should hope not under the same circumstances."

"Oh, yeah," Ginny rolled her eyes. "I'm actually a vampire and need blood donations to keep me going every few months."

"Don't be ridiculous," Evelyn laughed. "Everyone knows vampires are myths."

"I'll bring the boys over in a little while and you can baby-sit while we have a night in," Blip said.

"All right, all right," said Ginny. "But you owe me an explanation."

* * *

 **Be your own person.**

"Could you turn the TV down, please?" Evelyn called. Two years had passed, and Ginny's arrival in San Diego had meant many more late nights at the Sanders house—through every phase of the lunar calendar.

"No," said Marcus. "It's already too quiet."

"Why don't we play outside?" Ginny suggested. "Show me your skates?"

"Yeah!" said Gabe. "Did you bring skates? I'll race you."

"Nope! Sorry. But I can run pretty fast!"

"You can time us!" said Marcus. "We'll race, right Mom! Can we?"

"Ssh," said Evelyn. "Yes, if Ginny's watching. Just be careful."

"Who's racing what now?" Blip said, putting away the last of the dishes. "Don't make me bring out my robo-ump timing skills!"

"Dad," Marcus groaned, "you're not a robo-ump."

"That's not what the last puny mortal who dared to question my judgment said!"

Gabe rolled his eyes, having clearly heard this one before. "Yeah, yeah, what did you do to him."

"Go lace up your skates and I'll tell you."

"You sure you don't want me to come along?" Ginny asked.

"Nah, I think we're all set. Evie, you all right if Ginny hangs out here?"

"I'd appreciate it, thanks," said Evelyn.

"Is everything all right?" said Ginny, once the others had headed out.

"By my standards?" Evelyn shrugged. It was a day or two till fullness, and Ginny knew what that meant; Evelyn's senses had begun sharpening to out-attune a typical human's. She could see the pitches of a curveball even in a night game, but a faint rustling of papers outside her door might prove to be an obnoxious irritant. "Well, I've heard word that Anabel Jacobson was spotted in town."

"I'm sorry," Ginny said, hoping that her failure to cultivate an interest in the world outside of baseball growing up wasn't about to make her look like an idiot. "I don't know if that's a good thing."

"You wouldn't." Evelyn gave a thin, wistful smile. "She was the one who turned me."

"I'll take that as a bad thing."

"I was in college," she went on. "Doing longform stuff for the student newspaper, if you can believe that—and there were all sorts of secret society exposes going on. Every other year there'd be an effort to lock down the steam tunnels, why we still had those I don't know. The older generations cling to their pack hierarchies, and it's not really _that_ secret—easy enough to play off as a joke, I guess, but enough stories keep coming back that eventually people follow up. I got tipped off to some rituals, got in too deep, and Jacobson got spooked—she figured she had to bite me or I'd spill too much."

"Would you have?"

"In retrospect, I think she could have bought my silence. But I didn't know the alternatives. How could I? I wouldn't have believed any of it, not really."

"So she just wants to stay hidden? Then what's she doing in a city?"

"I'm not sure it was ever really as simple as that. Maybe she didn't come to campus to recruit, but she still believed in the old pack idea even when it seemed clear that we couldn't stay hidden forever, not around people. For a while I didn't know anything about being—a werewolf, beyond what she taught me. That the pack is stronger with a leader, but that new blood refreshes everyone. That it would be easier, if I ever wanted to have children, to stay among the pack. Less painful."

"Is she _mad_ that you left? Does she want revenge?"

"I don't think she believes in baneleaf, so she's as dangerous as anyone, but I don't think she's vindictive. Once I figured how to make it on my own, I told her I was a loner and broke free. That was that."

"You make it sound easy."

Evelyn shrugged. "Business school was hard. Raising two kids on a minor league salary was hard. Double-checking Anabel's routes and making sure we could avoid humans for a night, before baneleaf, before _Google Maps_ —I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Leaving the pack was the easiest thing I'd done in a long time."

"It's impressive to me, anyway," said Ginny, "but okay, I recognize a silver bullet if I saw it on a radar gun, so I guess my opinion doesn't count—"

"Don't you start," Evelyn said, but she was laughing, her voice barely above a whisper.

Ginny paused. "Do the boys know?"

"Not the history, but a little about my 'illness,' yes. We don't want them to feel like they have to keep secrets, I think that would just make matters worse."

"Probably for the best."

"Gabe is a little frightened by it, I think. Marcus wants to know when he can have superpowers, too, and I'm not ready for that conversation."

Ginny laughed. "Parenting never gets any easier."

* * *

 **Play through the pain.**

"So good news and bad news," Ginny said. "Good news is I'm technically clear to start working out again, and I know I have a lot of progress to make before everyone reports to camp. Bad news, is that they don't want to stress my arm too much yet, so basically all I can do is run laps. I'm a pitcher! Come on, how many laps am I ever going to have to run."

It was, of course, a rhetorical question.

"Yeah, yeah, I can't wait until I draw a walk and they give me the green light to catch some unsuspecting rookie off guard. That'll be the day." She carefully adjusted the phone in her left hand. "I'm worried about spring training. Even in the best case scenario, assuming I'm—better—by then, I'll still be a marginal fifth starter looking for my job back. And I'm sure the front office won't be looking for excuses to keep me around. But I guess that's what I wanted all along, isn't it? A chance to compete, just like anyone else."

She sighed.

"Otherwise they say I should be in okay shape for the season, as long as I don't gorge myself on extra Cracker Jack. Uh...sorry if that threw you off. Have you ever gotten a big tablet? With one of those huge touch-screen keyboards. Maybe that would help."

On the other end of the line, Evelyn waited in silence.

When she called back early the next morning, Ginny didn't pick up, and she took this as a good sign; hopefully Ginny was off trying to beat the heat doing wind sprints, or the latest indignity visited upon lazy pitchers through the years. She tried again late in the evening, and that time Ginny answered. "Hey! How's it going?"

"Well, after being cooped up for a day, I feel like I _should_ be out running windsprints."

"Better you than me."

Evelyn laughed. "I guess I never told you about the iPad. I tried e-mailing Blip once?"

"Yeah?"

"Accidentally crushed it. Not so ergonomic for claws."

"That's terrible!"

"Blip didn't care, he got to be in a commercial for the new model anyway, so that was free."

"Still. Not being able to talk to _anyone_ for a day..."

"He's a little more annoyed when I try to memorize everything I've brainstormed, and these last few months most of it is serious menu ideas. Of course, when I'm a wolf my tastes are all out of whack even with the baneleaf. So I need someone to talk me down to earth—is roast lamb with guacamole any good?"

"Probably great. At a sports bar? No."

"I thought you were staying out of my way on the bar front," Evelyn teased.

"I thought I got to be a distraction when there's nothing else to talk about."

"That was then, this is now," Evelyn said. "We don't take off-seasons."

"Well, if you don't want your co-workers to catch on, you're just going to have to come up with even weirder dishes to suggest throughout the month."

"Okay," Evelyn conceded. " _That_ can be your job."

* * *

 **Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.**

"...the video, which was streaming on Facebook, appears to show a large canine attacking a child in a forest outside Delaware, where wolves are believed to be extinct in the wild..."

 _Click_.

"...only the latest in a string of cryptic tweets heralding #LupinePride, but with no further evidence or explanation to what this could mean for the increasingly notorious monsters..."

 _Click_.

"...while self-proclaimed werewolf expert JTPwnzUrMom420 has weighed in with his list of which government figures might actually be working for the lycanthropic underworld..."

For once, Ginny wished the talking heads would start speculating on her recuperation (fine), engage in far-too-early rumormongering about the Padres' playoff hopes (terrible), or even debate the merits of Mike Lawson's beard (still awful). But it wasn't to be. One spike in the news cycle led to the next, and even Ginny couldn't always sort truth from guesswork.

"I mean, it's not like we all have each other's cell phone numbers," Evelyn explained. "That would make investigating this really easy. And also be pointless. It's not like we can howl a lot into our cell phones."

"You can just laugh it off like that?"

"Not really. I'm worried sick."

"Sick like at a full moon? It's gibbous." _Gibbous_ —she must have learned that word once, before meeting Evelyn, but forgotten it until it had reason to be part of her life again.

"No, _worried_ sick."

"Do you think anyone's seen you?"

"No. Not unless you're planning to cause a news leak."

Ginny giggled. "You know me. Always need to control the headlines."

"Pitchers. Always need control of _something."_

"So you're a loner. Nobody knows who you are. It'll be okay."

Evelyn shook her head. "It's not that easy. It's just a matter of time before the other shoe drops, and in the meantime, I have to watch my back."

Ginny took that in. "So what can I do?"

"Not to 'stick to sports' you, but for a start? Your job."

"Is that gonna help?"

"Not really. But we can be paranoid and lumped in with the rest of this mess, with the Padres losing and you hurting yourself again, or we can be in the same boat with the Padres winning. I know which I'd prefer."

"No promises," said Ginny, "but I'll see what I can do."

"...next up on ESPN, Livan Duarte opens up to us about his adjustment to life in America and the Padres' new season. Plus, do high school football players face unacceptable risks of concussions...or werewolf bites? Our guest promises a hot take..."

"...as cities debate whether to instill temporary curfews, many industries have protested that the economy will be negatively effected by the absence of nightlife. Ted Copeland, asked to advocate for more daytime sports, was unavailable for comment..."

"...corroborated in more and more areas around the world. Are these merely converging pieces of folklore, or a widespread threat? Our guest, Dr. Natalie Luongo, joins us to report on the latest updates..."

* * *

 **Turn social media to your advantage.**

Ginny did a double-take before answering her cell phone. " _Eliot_?"

"Ginny! How's it going?"

"Ah, you know. If I squint and look up I can _sort_ of make out a wild card spot, can't complain. How are _you_? _Where_ are you?"

"LA. Putting the band back together, moving ahead. Well, moving, anyway. I have _business cards_. With my own name on them. And my own minuscule cubicle!"

"I..." She hadn't seen him since before she'd gotten hurt, had always assumed he'd left with Amelia. Perhaps standing up to her, as difficult and painful as it had been, had given Eliot the chance to break free, too. "That's great! Good for you."

"We all love your ad, by the way. Spencer wants to know if you can make him one."

"Who's Spencer?"

"Our drummer."

"And why does he want _me_ to make him an ad? Isn't that kind of your job?"

"Well, he's also a werewolf, obviously."

"Oh," said Ginny.

It wasn't much by Amelia's standards, really, but it had been a lot easier to come up with than most of the endorsement deals she had to sit through. Really, Ginny was hardly in it at all; it had just been an idea, something better than sitting around.

 _"Hi, I'm Evelyn Sanders," said Evelyn; they'd taped the voiceover later, and dubbed it over. "You've probably already heard of Screwgies Bar and Grill... that it's the best place to watch the Padres...the best place for a burger and a beer...or for a tuna specialty." The camera panned around the restaurant, showing the TV displaying one of Ginny's games, happy fans toasting a win, and cooks ordering up a new meal._

 _"You may not have heard that I'm a werewolf." Cut to Evelyn in the kitchen, turning her paw to mimic stirring. A cook, taking the hint, began attentively stirring the pot. "But even when I don't have an appetite for seafood, I'm munching on baneleaf and daydreaming up the next great item for our menu." She raised a paw to her face, in a thinking posture. "With your help, we can feed every Padres fan—every day of the month." Outside near the bar with other customers, she sported an enormous jersey that was usually the chicken's._

"We don't really have a budget for that kind of thing," Eliot explained, "but I thought, like, a gif of him transforming could go viral. How far away did you have to stand to film that? Is it safe? Can werewolves even take selfies?"

"You should try asking Evelyn that. Or have you tried asking him?"

"Well...I didn't actually know until just this week. So, no, we don't talk about it a whole lot."

"Huh," Ginny said. "Is this to promote your album?"

"Album? We're not at the _album_ stage yet. It's a work in progress."

"I see."

"Well, I'll try calling Evelyn. And hey, if I have any spare time, I'd be happy to modernize the Screwgies Twitter feed!"

"While I'd love to believe you, I still don't believe you're actually acquainted with the concept of spare time."

* * *

 **Don't let superstition get you down.**

"Our guest on today's broadcast is Evelyn Sanders, wife of center fielder Blip, and one of San Diego's first werewolf entrepreneurs! Thanks for joining us, and for throwing out the ceremonial first pitch today."

"I've got a lot of work to do to match Baker's control."

"Quite—and another fastball on the outside corner, she's really bringing it today! You've been a recent advocate for the lycanthropic community, giving the city a window on your life at work. Is that fair to say?"

"I'm not sure if I'd go that far. I think everyone who owns a restaurant wants the world to see them at work and then follow them in, and I'm no exception!"

"Do you think there will be others following after you?"

"Others how? I welcome any friendly competition in the marketplace. And yes, even though I do have keen eyesight in werewolf form, I've promised not to use it for corporate espionage."

"I'm sure that comes as a relief! But, any other big-name werewolves to watch out for?"

"I don't know of any, and if I did, I'd hate to steal their thunder."

"A walk will put the lead runner on first. There's been a lot of speculation about historical figures who might have been werewolves unbeknownst to us; do you think there's anything to be gained from this kind of talk?"

"I think it's mostly harmless, but like you say, we can never really know. Even Blip likes to go back and look through old box scores to see which schedules could be lunar-calendar related."

"So you think there's something?"

"He does; I think it's overblown. Look, we all know about the 1965 Dodgers, right? Won the World Series with Sandy Koufax pitching on short rest, because he'd skipped the first game to honor Yom Kippur. Any werewolf playing ball in those days would have had a lot harder time than we do now, sneaking around without baneleaf, but would have needed the same camaraderie with their teammates that any team relies on today."

"A foul pop to third for the first out. Now, we've received lots of e-mails from listeners who wanted to thank you for joining us, but rather than read all their questions, I'll just quote Julia from Oceanside who asks if it's true that you help keep the world safe from vampires."

"Thanks, Julia! Actually—and you can believe this or not, coming from me—but we've never once found any reason to believe that there are such things as vampires. I've never fought one, and if they do exist, they'll announce themselves whenever they want. Until then, we'll be using up our garlic in our appetizers."

"Well, take it from a pro! And a sharp grounder to second, over to short—flipped to Lawson at first today, for the out there, and a double play will get Baker out of the inning. Evelyn Sanders, thanks so much for joining us!"

"My pleasure, and I hope to see you all at Screwgies!"


End file.
